History
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The phenomenon of drug addiction has occurred to some degree throughout recorded history (see "Opium"). Modern agricultural practices, improvements in access to drugs, advancements in biochemistry, and dramatic increases in the recommendation of drug usage by clinical practitioners have exacerbated the problem significantly in the 20th century. Improved means of active biological agent manufacture and the introduction of synthetic compounds, such as methamphetamine are also factors contributing to drug addiction.
Read more about this topic: Substance Dependence
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“History takes time.... History makes memory.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)